AFL: West Coast Eagles’ Josh Kennedy laments back-to-back losses

THE last two weeks were always going to be challenging fixtures for us and disappointingly we lost both games.

They are obviously quality teams, but if we are going to have an impact on the season they are the sorts of games we have to win and we have let ourselves down.

While the outside perception at the start of the year might have been that we would automatically play finals, we always knew it was going to be

tough. We believe we will qualify for finals, but we also want to do more than make up the numbers.

And to do both of those things we need to take our game to another level.

We know we have it in us, but we need to start producing it.

As one of the leaders in the group, we take responsibility for where we are and we have a few areas we need to address to build momentum into the

season.

Fortunately we are only at the half-way mark, so there is time.

One of the great messages from coach Adam Simpson is that things are never as good as they seem after a big win and they’re never as bad after a loss. Keeping things balanced is the key and we need to take a measured, considered approach to getting back on track.

We’re still in the top eight mix and that’s our target. We have to build towards it, week by week.

This week we head to Brisbane and will need to take this game on with a positive mindset, play our way for the full four quarters and work together.

Saturday was a reminder of the effort and energy needed to win at this level and we’ll carry those lessons forward after reviewing the game.